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Y  3^1941 


ADDRESS 

L. 


People    of    San    Francisco 


jVlEMBEf^s    OF    Congress 


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http://www.archive.org/details/addressofpeopleoOOsanfrich 


San  Francisco,  Jan.  18,  1895. 


Sir:  On  Saturday  evening  last,  on  two  days' 
notice,  during  one  of  the  heaviest  storms  of  the  sea- 
son, a  public  meeting  was  held  at  Metropolitan  Tem- 
ple in  this  city  (which  was  crammed  to  its  utmost 
capacity  and  from  which  not  less  than  fifteen  thou- 
sand people  were  turned  away)  to  protest,  among 
other  things,  against  any  funding  of  the  Pacific 
Railroad  debts. 

The  strength  and  unanimity  of  sentiment,  the 
earnest  determination  of  the  audience,  which  repre- 
sented every  shade  of  politics,  even  the  Press  could 
not  adequately  describe. 

No  counterpart  to  the  scene  has  ever  occurred  in 
this  city  since  1861,  when  at  the  intersection  of 
Market  and  Montgomery  streets  twenty-three  thou- 
sand men  resolved  to  maintain  the  union  of  these 
states  with  their  lives,  their  fortunes  and  their 
sacred  honor. 

At  that  meeting,  without  a  dissenting  voice,  the 
following  resolutions  were  adopted: 

Resolved,  By  the  people  of  San  Francisco  in  mass 
meeting  assembled,  that  we  enter  our  solemn  pro- 
test against  the  passage  of  any  funding  bill  what- 
ever, and  hereby  appeal  to  the  Speaker  of  the 
House  to  protect  us  by  not  giving  a  special  order  for 
a  day  to  the  Pacific  Railroad  Committee;  and  fur- 
ther 

Resolved,  That  we  appeal  to  each  individual  mem- 


ber  of  the  House  of  Representatives  not  to  overlook 
the  200,000  protests  filed  against  the  bill  by  the  in- 
habitants of  the  Pacific  Coast. 

In  order  to  carry  into  effect  the  objects  of  this 
meeting,  a  permanent  committee  of  citizens  was 
appointed  with  full  authority  to  act.  This  commit- 
tee has  instructed  the  undersigned  to  lay  before  you 
in  proper  manner  our  peoples^  objections  to  the 
funding  of  the  railroad  debts.  In  their  opposition 
to  funding  said  debts,  notwithstanding  what  may 
be  said  to  the  contrary,  the  people  of  the  Pacific 
Coast  are  practically  unanimous. 

Our  railroad  communication  with  other  parts  of 
the  Union  has  been  and  is  controlled  by  four  men 
(and  their  heirs)  whose  united  fortune  in  1862  did 
not  exceed  half  a  million.  These  men  were  lavishly 
endowed  by  the  people  in  their  municipal,  State  and 
federal  capacities  with  land  and  money  aggregating 
quadruple  the  cost  of  building  the  said  roads;  they 
have  drained  our  people  of  every  dollar  that  they 
could  extract  by  excessive  freights  and  fares;  they 
have,  through  the  power  thus  given  them,  entrenched 
their  own  monopoly,  and  established  and  made 
other  monopolies  subservient  to  their  interests;  they 
have  discouraged  the  development  of  the  State,  and 
by  the  addition  of  extortion  and  fraud,  have  accu- 
mulated the  unprecedented  sum  of  fully  two  hundred 
millions  of  capital. 

This  fortune,  impossible  of  realization  by  honora- 
ble  means,  is  the  aggregation  of  donations,  subsidies 
and  loans;  and  the  fraudulent  division  and  absorp- 
tion of  the  earnings  and  ])rofits  of  the  producing 
mass.     By  means  of  the  power  thus  secured,  they 


have  succeeded  in  excluding  all  competition,  and 
have  maintained  powerful  lobbies  at  every  session 
of  the  Legislature  of  this  State  and  the  nation,  pre- 
pared to  buy  wherever  honor  was  for  sale,  and  to  de- 
ceive where  they  could  not  buy.  They  have,  by  the 
exercise  of  such  power,  held  this  State  in  a  condi- 
tion of  strangulated  subserviency. 

They  now,  through  their  agents  and  confederates, 
are  seeking  to  use  the  Senators  and  Representatives 
of  this  Congress  to  relieve  them  of  the  payment  of 
their  just  debts  and  obligations  to  the  government, 
and  to  saddle  the  same  on  the  people  of  the  country, 
with  interest  for  from  fifty  to  one  hundred  years  to 
come. 

This  is  but  a  shifting  of  the  obligation  from  the 
men  who  incurred  and  should  pay  it,  and  the  plac- 
ing it  as  a  mortgage  upon  the  labor  of  our  people 
and  posterity. 

Against  such  action  we  do  now  most  solemnly 
protest,  as  an  outrage  and  a  wrong  which  should 
not  be  perpetrated  against  a  free  and  independent 
people. 

The  case  of  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad  Co.,  it  is 
not  our  province  to  discuss.  The  circumstances 
surrounding  it  are  different  from  those  attending 
the  construction  of  the  Central  Pacific  Railroad. 
We  object  to  the  combination  of  the  cases  of 
these  two  corporations,  the  object  of  which  is,  to 
use  any  strength  possessed  by  the  one  to  bolster  the 
weakness  of  the  other. 

The  Central  Pacific  Railroad  is  a  California  cor- 
poration. The  creditors  (including  the  Govern- 
ment)   are    protected     not    only    by    principles    of 


6 

equity  but  by   the  individual  liability   of  its  stock- 
holders. 

It  was  built  and  completed  by  the  Contract  and 
Finance  Company,  a  corporation,  composed  of  the 
same  four. men  who  owned  the  road,  and  who  at  its 
completion  in  1869  divided  not  less  than  $40,000,- 
000,  as  the  profits  of  construction  over  and  above 
its  cost  and  before  any  practical  returns  were  re- 
ceived on  account  of  operation.  By  thus  diverting 
$40,000,000  which  should  have  gone  to  pay  the 
debts  of  this  Company  these  men  have  been  en- 
abled to  dominate  the  people  of  the  country  and 
have  used  the  means  thus  illegitimately  obtained  to 
assist  in  building  up  their  enormous  fortunes. 
.  Out  of  this  money  and  the  earnings  of  the  Cen- 
tral Pacific  they  have  built  the  Southern  Pacific,  its 
tributaries  and  its  branches.  They  have  stocked 
the  same  with  the  best  of  the  rolling  stock  belong- 
ing to  the  Central  Pacific,  and  have  resorted  to 
every  means  possible  to  leave  the  last-named  com- 
pany in  a  bankrupt"andj{crippled  condition. 

There  is  not  an  honest  and  able  lawyer  or  judge  in 
the  United  States  that  does  not  know  that,  inde- 
pendent of  the  liability  of  stockholders  under  our 
California  law,  such  transactions  as  these  can  be 
reached  through  established  processes  of  equity, 
and  Mr.  Huntington  and  the  representatives  of  his 
deceased  associates  be  forced  to  disgorge  their 
plunder.  No  one  who  investigates  the  question  can 
fail  to  ascertain  that  the  object  of  these  funding 
bills  is  to  condone  personal  responsibility  ;  to  legally 
sanction  the  wrecking  of  the  C.  P.  R.  R.  Co.,  and  to 
consecrate   to  Mr.   Huntington    the    accumulations 


7  ikfiicf  oh  Libnuy 

which  he  actually  uses  to  debauch  politics  and  law. 
In  this  State,  with  all  our  long  submission  to  this 
intolerable  tyranny,  we  feel  that  we  are  Americans 
in  fact  and  in  sentiment,  and  were  born  with  all 
the  rights  supposed  to  be  secured  by  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  and  by  our  Federal  and  State 
Constitutions.  If  we  are  to  be  sold  to  Mr.  Hunting- 
ton and  his  associates,  let  the  bill  of  sale  be  officially 
promulgated,  not  through  such  a  funding  bill  as  has 
been  proposed,  but  directly  and  positively.  We 
have  built  up  and  sought  to  develope  a  great  State, 
as  an  integral  part  of  the  American  Union.  We 
have  contributed  many  hundreds  of  millions  to  the 
wealth  of  the  Nation.  We  have  largely,  though 
unwillingly,  done  the  work,  out  of  which  the  private 
fortunes  of  these  railroad  millionaires,  who  now 
seek  to  extinguish  even  the  equity  of  redemption, 
have  been  constructed.  We  stood  by  the  Union 
with  men  and  with  money  when  it  needed  help. 
Why  should  we  be  reduced  to  utter  slavery  and  to 
comparative  poverty  through  a  funding  bill  passed 
by  the  representatives  of  our  sister  States,  which, 
while  they  cannot  be  exempted  from  the  demoraliza- 
tion which  such  a.  condition  reveals,  will  scarcely 
feel  the  financial  burthen  they  impose  on  us.  It 
is  full  time  that  California  should  be  treated, 
not  as  a  dependent  province,  but  as  an  Ameri- 
can State,  and  that  criminality,  hedged  only 
by  money  and  fraud,  should  not  exercise  an  over- 
powering influence  over  us  in  our  National  coun- 
cils. If  the  debts  of  a  looted  corporation  are  to  be 
funded,  then  let  the  debts  of  honest  citizens  be  also 
aggregated  and  funded  for  fifty  or  a  hundred  years 


at  two  per  cent,  per  annum.  Any  citizen  ought  to 
be  equal  to  a  railroad  corporation  or  to  a  plutocrat. 
We  ask  for  nothing  but  common  integrity  and  com- 
mon justice,  and  we  hope  that  our  demands  may 
not  be  unheeded.  The  issue  is  squarely  presented. 
Will  you  sir,  take  the  side  of  the  people,  for  whom 
we  address  you,  rather  than  endorse  the  men  who 
are  their  bitterest  enemies  and  who  to-day  consti- 
tute the  most  corrupting  element  in  this  land — ded- 
icated by  our  fathers  and  by  those  who  died  to  save 
it,  to  honor,  to  truth,  to  justice,  to  all  that  uplifts 
and  develops  the  human  race? 

Oblige  us  by  answering  this  question,  and  by 
determining,  in  your  own  mind,  both  from  business 
and  patriotic  standpoints,  how  the  balance  should 
be  held  between  Mr.  Huntington  and  the  people  of 
the  State  of  California? 

With  eutire  respect  we  remain,  sir  , 
Very  truly  yours, 

James  H.  Barry. 
Chas.  C.  Terrill, 
John  M.  Reynolds, 
Committee  on  Funding  Bill. 


